


The Aftermath

by linndechir



Category: Always Crashing in the Same Car (2007)
Genre: Blackmail, Humiliation, M/M, Power Play, Threats
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-26
Updated: 2015-04-26
Packaged: 2018-03-25 11:39:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,591
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3809014
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/linndechir/pseuds/linndechir
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bill has a little talk with Jim after the press conference to make sure Jim understands who's in charge now.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Aftermath

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Tish](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tish/gifts).



Bill enjoyed watching him. The frozen Stepford smile plastered on Jim's face before he'd even noticed Bill, shaky and nervous, sweat shining on his forehead, his hands clutching the speaker's desk too tightly. It was hard to believe that he was fooling anyone, but then again nervous fake smiles were nothing if not expected from a politician.

Bill watched, and he could pinpoint the horrified moment when Jim saw him at the back of the room, saw him and then the blue plastic bag Bill shifted just so to let Jim glance at the tapes inside of it. They weren't the real tapes, of course. The real tapes were carefully locked into a safe where Jim would never find them, a priceless weapon in Bill's ever-growing arsenal used to control Jim. The blackmail equivalent of a nuke, really – there was nothing Jim could do to fight this. Jim's smile faltered for a glorious moment, panic and guilt and hatred flitting through his eyes before he remembered to smile and reply to the reporters' questions the way Bill had told him to, like the good puppet he'd finally become.

As the press conference finished, Bill waited patiently, waited for the journalists to leave, for Jim to finish talking to his staff, watched him like Jim was a fly that had its wings torn off and was flapping about helplessly. Still putting on a good show, though; a man without a spine had to be able to pretend at least that he had one.

He didn't follow Jim immediately when Jim took off to his office, preferred to let him stew a while longer – wondering where Bill had gone to, what he was doing with those tapes, whom he was talking to. By the time Bill had strolled up to Jim's office, thrown a cheerful smile at Jim's secretary – he hadn't actually fucked her, he'd just made sure she wanted to – and gone in without knocking, Jim was shivering at his desk like a frightened child, but he jumped up as soon as Bill came in. He was livid in his panic, and Bill barely managed to close the door before Jim started screaming at him.

"What the fuck do you think you're doing? Are you out of your cunting mind, you filthy piece of shit?“

Jim looked like hell from up close: sweat had melted off the make-up his stylists had smeared on him for the press conference, dark circles bloomed around reddened eyes. His pathetic guilt had probably kept him up all night. He looked sickly and weak, and not for the first time Bill wondered why he still bothered with him. Probably because this was easier than finding himself a new way to power, a new man whose strings he'd have to learn how to pull.

"Jimbo, Jimbo," he admonished. Kept his voice smooth and even and ever so calm, not just because he didn't like to raise it, but because he knew it drove Jim out of his choleric little mind. "You don't want to talk to me like that right now."

Bill put the bag with the tapes on Jim's desk with a soft _plunk_ of cheap plastic on expensive mahogany – and how he enjoyed dragging Jim's filth back into his pristine office. Jim's eyes flitted to the tapes and he stretched out his hand, stilled immediately when Bill clicked his tongue.

"You don't think I'd be stupid enough to bring the only copy of your little performance here." He smirked slowly as Jim's eyes widened. "But I thought you might want to have a look at it. The image quality is shit, of course, but still."

"You fucking bastard," Jim snapped. "I kill- That poor woman is dead and you think this is a fucking joke."

"Nobody cared about her while she was alive, why the fuck should you care now that she's dead?" Bill shrugged. Jim's conscience bored him as much as any other man's did. He'd never understood people's desperate, vain need to feel like they were _good_.

"God, I fucking hate you, Bill. You're not even human, you know that? You're like a fucking snake."

"Ruining your paradise?" Bill laughed. "Don't be dramatic."

Jim stepped closer at that, bloodshot eyes staring down at Bill like he thought that'd intimidate him, like Bill didn't have a gun shoved down Jim's throat for the rest of his miserable life.

"Dramatic? What the fuck would you call what you just did?" Jim said, his voice shaking with anger. "Walking into that press conference, brandishing that shit while I'm doing exactly what you wanted in the first place? Did you want me to lose my damn composure in front of the entire British press or what was that supposed to accomplish?"

Bill hadn't backed off – he never had before, and he certainly wasn't going to start now. Instead he closed the remaining distance between them, watched as the fury in Jim's eyes was joined by revulsion and stubbornness, because Jim didn't want to back off either; he did so like to cling to the belief that he still had any power over Bill, that there were still things Bill couldn't do to him. 

Bill was getting rather tired of letting him have that illusion.

"Like you need my help to lose your composure, Jimbo. You manage to lose your shit all on your own." He wasn't touching Jim, didn't think he needed to to make Jim's skin crawl, judging by the look in his eyes, the sneer on his pale lips. "And if I wanted to make you lose it, Jimbo, to make you blubber and whimper like you did last night, I'd do far worse to you than just bring by some tapes."

He made sure he had Jim's full attention before he reached down and adjusted his cock; he wasn't actually hard, not like he'd been the night before, but he figured he could get there fast enough if he kept at this little game for a while, poking into every little soft spot Jim wore right under his skin, vulnerable and weak and so easy to take apart. 

"You fucking -" Jim was going for a snarl, but his voice cracked into a high-pitched whine, and Bill wasn't in the mood to let him rage more.

"I told you, you don't want to talk to me like that." Another smirk, another almost bored grope through the fabric of his suit. "Not when you've handed me your leash on a silver fucking platter."

His eyes dropped to Jim's tie, a slow, calculating gaze, wondering how much Jim would stumble if Bill yanked on it like Jim was an unruly dog. He didn't do it, just let the threat linger between them so Jim envisioned the worst. Not a man blessed with a lot of imagination, Jimbo was, but he was so anxious and nervous that he always managed to picture the worst things that might happen to him, especially where Bill was concerned.

"This isn't like the last time I saved your arse, and you snivelled for a little while until you got it into your head again that you were in charge. This," he nodded at the tapes on the desk, "doesn't have an expiration date. I own you, Jimbo."

"You can't fucking do this," and if Jim's voice kept cracking like that, Bill might just get hard after all. But he didn't want to go there just yet, he'd rather let Jim wait for it in fear for a little longer, make him wonder how far Bill would truly go.

"I can do anything to you I fucking like." Eyes on Jim's throat now, the bobbing of his Adam's apple, the nervous swallowing, before Bill met Jim's eyes again. "If I told you to suck my cock right now, do you know what you'd do? You'd get down on your bony knees, open your mouth, and suck like your miserable life depends on it, because it does."

And Jim flinched as if Bill had slapped him, stepped backwards like a man who was trying very hard to run away when there was clearly nothing he wanted to do more.

"I'm not going to let you do this to me, Bill." Jim's empty bravado was starting to bore Bill. Maybe he should put him on his knees right now and choke the defiance right out of him, but the thought of Jim tossing and turning at night over Bill's words and shaking during the day while he was waiting for it was every bit as good as imagining Jim with his whiny mouth stuffed. Bill was a patient man. Sometimes letting a wound fester hurt so much more than ripping it further open.

"But you will, Jimbo." Bill smiled at him, cheerful as a loaded gun, and picked up the bag from Jim's desk. Untangled it carefully, letting the rustling of the plastic crawl over Jim's eardrums. Jim's eyes were wide as those of a panicked horse, and he'd backed off so far that he was leaning against his desk. Bill waited for a moment, then another one, to see if Jim's mouth would keep babbling, but his thin lips were pressed tightly together, like he was trying not to cry again.

Bill was in no mood to have to calm him down again, so he turned and left Jim Booth to his fear and his guilt. After all, he could always come back and have his fun with him later. Jim was not going anywhere.


End file.
